Brian May on the Manchester attack
– https://youtu.be/Jn8U2udwBtc
BRIAN MAY:
“Yeah, I woke up this morning and saw the news of Manchester and the first thing I did was tweet about it and just to say, you know, express my grief and sympathy with the people. I mean, there were Mums there I was seeing online who didn’t even know if their child was alive or dead. It’s the most terrible thin, and if you, I mean, to me it’s almost impossible to imagine the kind of hatred that has to exist in someone if they bomb children and I’m afraid I regard everything as an opportunity. You know, out of tragedy comes knowledge and realisation and to me 9/11 and all these terrible disasters are an opportunity to re-evaluate ourselves. I think we failed to do that in 9/11 and we went on bombing people. Tony Blair, David Cameron, still have this attitude that you can solve a violent situation by violence. I don’t believe that. I believe we have to sweep all that away and start again.
“If we really think that we can solve this kind of violent behaviour by being violent ourselves and being racist and, you know, reacting in that way then we are in for the most terrible tragedy world, because this is how it escalates.
“To me, you have to break the cycle violence and you have to treat horrific events with compassion, stragely enough. I don’t mean compassion for the person who did the bombing, I mean you have to look at the world and say, ‘What part do we play in the world?’
“Of course we have to tighten up security and we will be playing that arena in December, in Manchester. We’ve played it before. We will be playing in December. No, we won’t cancel because life has to go on. That’s what they want, these people. They want to ruin our lives. They want to stop us making music, dancing, being happy, of course they do, and we have to, you know, stick to what we believe in which is that life is to be lived. So no, we wouldn’t cancel, and of course you have to look at security, but what you have to do much more importantly is look at the underlying causes. Why does the world hate us that much? There are reasons and I believe we should dismantle everything that’s gone before and start again.”